


No Food or Drink

by rispacooper



Category: The Closer
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-14
Updated: 2011-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rispacooper/pseuds/rispacooper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A glimpse of Buzz, with some hints of slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Food or Drink

**Author's Note:**

> Vague spoilers for the first season and part of the second. Dlasta = best cheerleader ever. Also a really nice beta reader. She's tempting me with porn...oh noooooes! Though The Closer needs some smuttage. Srsly. And more slash. And more Buzz/Sanchez, right?

When they first moved to where his stepfather had lived, to the small house on the edge of the barrio to where they were supposed to stay until they saved up to move somewhere else, Buzz was the only white kid for four blocks; the güero who understood more Spanish than he spoke, the kid who always wore the wrong clothes even when he had on the right ones. The rules never made any sense or stayed the same for long but they always resulted in Buzz in a ball on the ground. He came home bloody more often than not until he figured out to keep his head down when he couldn't be invisible and to be quiet until he understood what was going on.

He memorized the cracks in the pavement and the other lines in the streets that he'd never had to notice before, invisible divisions of not-this and not-that, if he'd learned anything else in that first year, it was that everyone looked the same from the ground up and viewed sideways, all frustrated streams of words he couldn't follow and identical flannel shirts, shoes just as dirty as his, not that anyone had seemed to see that. At least not until the last year of junior high, when Buzz had found himself left alone if not accepted, and watched even if no one spoke to him.

He made his first friend almost by accident, tricked into looking beyond the shoes and shirt by a careful laugh, and one curious hand pointing to the Wolverine patch on his backpack. He went tense, heat sparking through him in a confusing way that he decided must be the anxiety of a new friendship.

 

 

By high school, he somehow made another friend, and the three of them formed a makeshift AV club of VCRs, ancient hard drives that had to be coaxed into working, and late night Star Trek marathons at his house. School sucked, but nobody, not green aliens or lizard-men ever defeated the Enterprise, and computers could be repaired, were made of cords and wires that had a place, always, and even if they took the rest of the computers apart, the three of them could always rebuild them, make them work. Sometimes they made them work better.

Jimmy, a Korean as out of place as Buzz in that part of town, shared badly-copied episodes of MST3K and Red Dwarf and blown their minds. Ramon, his best friend from the Seventh Grade on, brought over magazines with pictures of people having sex for them to beat off to. He'd taken them from his older brother's room, opened them up with an eagerness for tits and ass that Jimmy at least never seemed to find confusing.

But Buzz thought of Ramon and naked men and didn't comment, biting his bottom lip until it was swollen and warm. He closed his eyes before he could get caught staring where he shouldn't. Anyway, he preferred the dark, it was safer.

 

College was a whole new world that Buzz psyched himself up to explore, dangerous in an entirely different way than what he was used to. He smoked pot, just a little, though his stepfather would have killed him if he found out. He went to uncomfortable costume parties at Dat's though he hated dressing up. Used John's computer to make fake ID's that they used to buy awful, cheap beer. Community college meant cheaper classes though not cheaper books, so he focused on his requirements and electives that didn't need books at all, enrolling in every film class they had. He didn't feel the need to make movies, but liked to sit in the dark and watch them, enjoyed learning about them in a way he didn't think many others did. But he blended in with the slacker kids, and the nerds too, ate lunch outside when he could and studied the world.

It was a shame he couldn't afford to go straight to a four year school, that's what everyone said, he was smart enough. But his family was proud of him, and Buzz loved the open campus, the laid back professors, computer labs with all that technology there for everyone to use. He met his first serious boyfriend there, blond, skinny Matt, who strolled up to him and commented on the Cylon on Buzz's t-shirt, talking softly until Buzz answered, even laughing when Buzz had joked about Dirk Benedict.

Matt was more into the pot and beer than Buzz was, and taking classes there to pass the time. It was over in a few months when Buzz got accepted to the U.C. They'd said goodbye after a weekend sex marathon that left Buzz with the feeling that sex and fun was all it had been, maybe for both of them. Matt's skin was warm, not hot, but the sparkling crush Buzz had had back in junior high was probably something childish that adults didn't feel. That's what Buzz told himself, and ignored the lack of heat in the guys who approached him at conventions, in his apartment building. By the time he was close to graduating, he pretty much forgot about it anyway, and pushed aside most of the invitations he received so he could focus on exams and finding a good job.

 

The tiny, shadowed monitering room was Buzz's space since he first got the job with the LAPD. A small room full of screens that showed someplace else, a place to earn money until he got a job somewhere else, maybe even out of L.A.

The observation room should have felt confining, especially when it was full of cops who ignored suggestions and rules for all that they were supposed to enforce them. But Buzz liked it, his computers that he'd built by himself and the situation hadn't been all that different than what he'd grown up with. He didn't need to get used to anything else, he wasn't one of them. He was a tech, just a tech, and he did his work and then went home.

He made sure to keep still when surrounded by watchful faces glued to what was happening on his moniters, stared at lights flickering in the dark and not at the stories with no happy endings. He focused on removing dirty hands from the expensive but hopelessly outdated equipment that the cops may have needed but had no respect for, and hid his annoyance when that always made the detectives laugh at him as much as they laughed at the people they were trying to catch.

 

There was a steady stream of those too, familiar nightmares from his childhood; liars, pimps, murderers, bullies and monsters who were read their rights but talked anyway, most of the time even when they shouldn't. It was one more item on the list of things Buzz didn't understand and didn't try to. He couldn't figure out if the suspects in those chairs believed it when the sharp-eyed, angry detectives acted nice, or if they only wanted to. Either way the detectives smiled and nodded and told them to keep going. When that didn't work of course they'd yell, throw things around, just as forceful and rough as any ex-cons despite the suits they all made sure to wear, dark brown or black, sometimes navy blue, with cheap, unexceptional ties.

Buzz turned down the volume on his headphones when he could, and rarely looked beyond the scowls on the cops' faces when they returned to flick at the moniters as though the screens and Buzz could produce what they wanted. They never spoke to him unless it was about the equipment, which was fine. He came in his t-shirts and jeans and kept to himself. He couldn't imagine what it was they'd say to each other anyway.

 

Cops were a sea of blank, tense, scary figures, irritated when he denied them coffee and pointed to the sign below the main computer screen. They were amused at victims and suspects alike, stared hard at Buzz when he never laughed, when he told them to take their food outside. He was just the goddamn tech after all, a geek in a flannel shirt and jeans, and for his first few years with the LAPD, occasionally “that faggot” in sotto-voiced complaints. That had been back before the slew of lawsuits and reprimands, not that Buzz had thought it had actually been a personal insult, not when he'd made sure not to get noticed, when they called anyone who angered them that name or something similar, racial, sexual, sexist, because of course cops were not brown, or female, or gay. Maybe they honestly weren't, it wasn't like Buzz had studied them to find out. Or maybe just those things didn't matter as long as you were a cop, one more stupid rule for a group of people he was never going to understand.

Buzz had barely blinked in any case; fists hurt worse than words, most of the time, and there were always cables or a new internet connection that needed his attention.

 

His new assignment, his “new” equipment, was intended as some sort of promotion. He liked the raise, but didn't understand what “Priority Homicide” meant, what made one death more important than another. At best, it probably meant he'd see some celebrities in those interview rooms. At worst, he'd still be ignoring, and being ignored by, more pissed off detectives.

 

In a matter of days, Chief Johnson had made him wonder if he'd been wrong. She was tiny, a woman, her accent awkward and out of place even in a city as supposedly diverse as Los Angeles, but the first thing he'd really noticed about her was the snacks she was forever pulling from her giant bag, and the startled way she'd blinked and _looked_ at him when he'd mumbled something about food and the machines.

Her eyes were just as sharp as any of the other cops in the new group of detectives around him, and had swept up and down him before she'd made a face and tossed her food—candy, he thought—back into her purse. She did the same thing each and every time he reminded her of the cost of the equipment, no different from the rest after all, cop first, person second, until the last day of her first month on the job, when she'd popped one defiantly in her mouth anyway and marched out of the room with her bag over her shoulder.

She'd reappeared in one of his moniters a moment later, offering an identical piece of candy to her suspect.

“I have to sneak them in here,” she'd confessed with a wide, friendly smile, “Buzz—that would be our audio/video technician—won't let me anywhere else. I guess some people are more concerned with their rules than they are with catchin' murderers.” She rolled her eyes and looked shocked. “Can you believe that?”

That she had known his name and used it, had brought Buzz's head up more than the fact that she'd been saying all of that to a murderer and gotten that murderer to agree with her.

 

 

“I'm starting to think she's always like that,” the older, grumpy detective—lieutenant—commented to Buzz not a week later, after Chief Johnson had cornerned Buzz in the hall and fired questions at him about surveillance equipment, the two large, silent cops at her back looking as confused as Buzz felt.

Buzz had tried to explain to her that he thought that what she was asking for wasn't exactly legal, though it was definitely possible, only to have Chief Johnson tell him to let her worry about “little things like that”.

The Lieutenant had shrugged at Buzz behind her back, mouthed the word, “Women” and after a moment of inappropriate staring, Buzz had focused back on her, then nodded.

The Chief had already been striding away, a sweet, “Why thank you, Buzz,” hanging in the air as much as the brief flash of amusement in the eyes of the Latino detective shadowing her.

Buzz had frowned before he could help it, caught staring, but the detectives had gone after her, and he'd had to quickly turn to face the Lieutenant.

“It's just as well,” the old man sighed, crossing the space between them and coming forward to, of all things, pat Buzz's shoulder. He didn't appear to notice Buzz's open mouth. “I never liked that guy, and I suppose that's what all good rules are for.”

“What?” Buzz had had to clear his throat to speak, but the Lieutenant—his name was something Italian, Provenza, Brovenza—was moving forward, one hand still at Buzz's back, bringing Buzz along with him as he talked. For all his age and slumped shoulders, his grip was like iron, completely inflexible.

 

They held to everything else, but it turned out that rules were a fluid concept to the detectives of Priority Homicide. The law was something to be respected, but got around if possible. As far as Buzz could see, for cops, that was nothing new. But with his eyes on his moniters, on Chief Johnson sitting in an interrogation room with two of her detectives at her back, a potential killer in front of them, he still jumped the first time the detectives moved at her command into something a little less friendly.

He turned up the volume—no headphones, not with the room full, with the room silent but for the breathing behind him and the noise of this interview—but he didn't catch anything. Not a look, not a word, but both men stood and moved just the same. There was a brief pause in conversation, in what their suspect was saying, and as though that meant something, they were both suddenly in motion, pushing off walls, slamming heavy fists on the flimsy table, frightening and angry though the Chief herself was calm. Buzz flinched reflexively, but there was no violence, only the threat of it, a promise in the Chief's eyes before she looked over, lifted a hand.

Buzz felt his heart beating faster, and then one of the cops around him chuckled and pointed. Buzz's eyes went to one of the men at the Chief's back. The detective was serious again, calm, with his hands folded in front of him like some sort of Godfather-type enforcer, straight against the wall. But when the suspect started to talk, to babble away, he angled his head up and winked at the camera.

The cops behind Buzz laughed again, not seeming to notice, or care, that he didn't get what was funny.

 

 

One thing he did learn quickly was that interrogation was what Chief Johnson really liked to do, where she charmed, coaxed, and tricked nearly everyone into giving her what she wanted; confessions, admissions, alibis, information. Watching her was like watching an actress in a movie with a twist at the end. Watching the others was like watching a cop show, and Buzz had never cared much for cop shows. But he kept the volume up, even when he was alone in the room, even when what he was hearing was horrible and made him sick, made him double-lock his door some nights, Buzz kept the sound up and made himself busy while every awful detail was recorded.

He twisted knobs when it was worst, made certain everything was crystal clear because those people, those monsters, deserved to get put away, and the heavy-handed cops around him couldn't even manage their cell phones half the time and they were so simple.

In quieter moments, he found that sort of funny, that they could hear and see these things day in and day out, but needed him to push buttons.

It was watching Lt. Provenza try to deal with an iPod that finally made him crack a faint smile. The other detective in the room—newer to the squad than the rest—had looked up and caught him. Buzz tried to gulp in air, look neutral, but the man only rolled his eyes and shook his head in shared disgust before snatching the music player from Provenza's hands.

 

Almost six months in and more often than not, Buzz wasn't alone in the room during interrogations anymore. The others in their squad with him. Sergeant Gabriel, tall and dark and serious. Provenza and Flynn, bickering like an old married couple in the moments between confessions. Daniels, soft-voiced but smart. Sometimes Chief Pope himself. Almost always Detective Tao with his eager mind and actual respect for technology, and Detective Sanchez, there when the Chief didn't want him in the room with her.

Det. Sanchez was there to watch her, watch over her, in a way that made Buzz tense. The man had once leapt out of his chair and run down the hall into the interview room before a suspect had even gotten a full threat out of his mouth.

The Chief hadn't needed the help, had quieted Det. Sanchez with a few words and sent him back to Buzz. That time, there hadn't been a wink, and Sanchez had returned, his temperature hot even at the distance of a few feet.

He sat close too, always did. Buzz figured it was to be near the moniter, but the man made a small space smaller. His hands were rough and stained with grease, scratched like he'd just beaten someone to a pulp. He wore a suit too, but sometimes he spoke like the barrio, didn't speak at all when alone with the room with Buzz unless it was to comment on what Chief Johnson was doing or to ogle the women on the screens.

The first part Buzz got after a few months; the man wasn't just loyal to Chief Johnson, he was learning from her. The second part he finally figured must be some sort of manly bonding thing, impersonal, safe, small talk with someone that he couldn't possibly have anything else to talk about.

“She's hot, right?” The detective wondered, like always, and Buzz nodded because it was expected, only looking up when he realized that the man next to him hadn't answered.

The woman in question had been a fifty-three year old meth addict with two teeth, not hot by anyone's standards. Buzz froze. It had to be some sort of joke, more dark cop humor he would never understand, but when he glanced over quickly, once, he thought Sanchez was studying him; it was hard to tell for sure, the room was too dark.

He tried to think, to remember any of the women that Sanchez had talked about in here, and realized he couldn't, not a single one, and that if the other man had learned anything from Chief Johnson, it's that you didn't have to be in an interview room to question someone.

Buzz dropped his head, stared hard at his keyboard, his shoulders hunched as he waited, but he didn't hear anything from Sanchez but heavy breathing. His hands stayed on the table.

 

On dates—which were rare these days because he didn't want to see anyone even _remotely_ connected to the PD, or with his parents—who had finally moved to a better part of town, Buzz had used to avoid questions about work, what he did, his coworkers. Now that he had stories to tell, he'd discovered that people didn't want to hear them. Why would they? Priority Homicide meant what Chief Johnson and Chief Pope decided it meant, which rarely meant celebrities, usually meant young girls working the streets, and drug dealers, and serial killers, and what those people said wasn't something others needed to hear.

At work he stared in horror at his screens and went home to BSG and a new laptop—personally constructed from the ground up—came back again, day after day for more of it, for when the Chief caught monsters scarier than anything Kirk had ever fought then ate her chocolate and went home.

Flynn dressed nice. Provenza liked baseball. Tao had his family, Gabriel and Daniels each other, judging from their exchanged looks. Buzz didn't know about Sanchez and never asked, but suspected he fixed up cars, built engines.

However they dealt at home, around Buzz in the monitering room, the detectives were quiet and then loud for the sounds of a rape victim sobbing, then gangbangers laughing.

Buzz couldn't look at them during that. But his face was hot for all that he felt cold, and he must have anyway, moved somehow. Provenza touched him, again.

“Lighten up, Buzz,” he chided, his face grave before he'd said something truly alarming. “You'll never last in the field.” Flynn, at his side, appeared to be just as serious, but Buzz had no idea what they were talking about.

“Yeah, at this rate, you'll never make it to retirement, and then this idiot will have to record of all this.”

Still looking up, Buzz and seen both Tao and Sanchez grinning at each other before they'd all turned back to watch the Chief and Sgt. Gabriel on the screen, gaining a man's confidence. Buzz had turned back too, slowly, still frowning. The pervert liked little girls, but the Chief was smiling at him. When this was over, she'd disappear into her office, put her head in hands for a while, then have two chocolates before going home.

Buzz adjusted the picture for absolute clarity, thought of the Monty Python boxset waiting for him in the safety of his apartment, tried not to wonder why they could possibly want him in the field.

 

Out with them, in the field, in the streets, in the homes of dead people, the world was loud, large, and too bright, even when viewed through the glass of the camera lens. He still didn't know why he was there, why they needed him, what help he was, but the—the Chief—asked and he found himself following after the others, waiting for their calls.

They were smart out there in a way they weren't in the observation room, their suits and gloves precise, faces mostly composed when confronted with horror, at the bloody bodies of families, only looking away when the medical examiners came to poke and prod the victims. They made no sounds when Buzz had to look away almost all of the time, not even the smallest laugh. They would joke again once the air no longer smelled like death, he'd learned that much at least, not sure if it was respect or their own queasy stomachs though that last one seemed impossible. Not that his thoughts mattered, he was just the AV tech, ready to disappear into a van that was a lot like his usual room, just with wheels that took him closer to things he had only had to listen to before.

He had the van set up exactly the way he liked it, kept it neat until the first stakeout when they had filled it with newspapers and magazines, junk food wrappers that fell out of their pockets. The Chief had just smiled blandly and thanked him for helping. The next stakeout he'd sighed and brought along a trash can.

The rest of the time outside the station he recorded everything they asked him to, kept the camera up and straight to document every single thing they did, helping, they claimed, by having proof that they had obeyed the letter of the law, stopping defense attorneys in their tracks.

Except that Buzz knew—they all knew—that when they were done at the scene he would stop the camera and whatever extra measures they took were practically invisible. Nothing illegal, not ever, not with the Chief so careful, but not by the book either.

“Making the best of those rules,” Chief Johnson had said, but now Buzz saw the reassuring, troubling twinkle in her eyes when she said it, along with the determined tilt of her chin, the way she stood in front of the bodies of her victims for a moment at every scene, talking to herself.

He didn't smile back like the rest of them did, but he wasn't surprised when he nodded.

 

 

Once he arrived at the latest scene, Flynn directed him to where he was supposed to be, past the tape, the uniforms guarding the building's entrance, up the stairs. Flynn never touched anyone, had on black latex gloves that somehow matched his dark suit and surprisingly pink tie. Buzz just lifted his camera and followed, taking in the shattered glass, the technicolor, flamboyant apartment, the broken body exposed in the middle of the room.

“There's evidence of more than one person living here,” Chief Johnson was somewhere to the side, Gabriel with her, and Buzz got a glimpse of them both, professional but unhappy as they took it all in as well.

“That would be the other name on the mailbox, Chief.” Sanchez came up behind him and Buzz finally moved out of the doorway, hefting the camera to make sure it was steady.

Most of his face was obscured by the camera as he filmed the victim, as the mic picked up the sound of Flynn, still talking.

“So Cinderella here and Prince Charming had a fight. Someone picks up a vase, and 'pow', Cinderella isn't going to the ball.”

“Detective!” Chief Johnson hissed to stop him with a nod at Buzz—at the camera, but Buzz kept still, continued filming the unmoving body on the floor.

“Sorry, Chief,” Flynn immediately apologized, and Buzz blinked, turning to film the rest of the apartment, pausing with the camera at an angle, sideways on Flynn in the doorway, part of his arm missing until Buzz shifted the camera. At the motion Flynn looked up, at him, but just for a second. “I'll just uh...” Flynn was slipping past Sanchez, who had the same flat, patient expression on his face that he wore in the interview rooms. He was looking at Buzz too.

Silence should have been comfortable, better than anything else, but even that was broken by the harsh cry from the doorway, from the hall behind both detectives, the apartment's other resident coming home.

How he got passed the tape and guards outside didn't matter, when they all knew why he had, but when he looked at the body before collapsing, Buzz was too slow to put the camera down. It was Flynn who stayed up, who caught the man and held him. The man was crying, oblivious to the black glove at his back, rubbing in stiff, uncertain circles. Flynn's gaze was down, his eyebrows together in a threatening frown and Buzz started to realize Flynn was speaking to _him_.

“Christ, Buzz, can't you turn that thing off for a second?”

Buzz immediately swung it to the side, his face hot, his muscles tense, and recorded the strangely unsurprised face of Det. Sanchez for several moments before he realized what he was doing, where he was staring. Sanchez met his gaze through the lens before his mouth curved up in something too faint to be a smile, as though he'd known something all along that Buzz should have figured out by now.

 

 

Buzz was slow sometimes, or felt that way around the detectives most of the time. If he listened, watched carefully and paid attention, he picked up some stuff, even understood it. Like that they would make use of anything and everything they could to solve a case, to put the bad people away, and he couldn't make himself feel angry about that when that meant using him too.

For Priority Homicide, and Chief Johnson, Buzz had revealed long forgotten Spanish when he'd never meant to, agreed to translate for them—for her—when Sanchez was somewhere else, the same way he'd agreed to leave this room and go out on the streets with them, like he was any sort of crimefighter. He wasn't a cop, but so far, no one had commented, and he had the feeling that it was because there was very little the rest of them wouldn't do for Chief Johnson, even with their occasional outbursts at her orders or methods.

Buzz's mild protests had certainly been overwhelmed, had dropped down to almost nothing and fast. The only one he'd managed to stick to had been the no food or drink near the equipment rule, no longer upset at the irritated, half-hearted arguments from the others, or expecting more than that. It was something else that was sort of amusing, when it wasn't totally confusing.

He felt foolish anyway, translating the insults being offered to Chief Johnson by the two cholos in the interrogation room with her. Most were about how sexy, or not sexy, they found her, but Buzz translated anyway—a slightly politer version—skipping one or two of the easily recalled curse words that abruptly stopped when—next to her—Det. Sanchez leaned forward and growled something too soft to be picked up by the microphones.

“Watch this,” Tao commented like he wished he had popcorn. Buzz half-turned to him, eyes glued on the screen, not surprised when Sanchez jumped from his seat and the Chief made a show of calming him down. It took her a moment longer than usual this time and Tao laughed shortly, about as alarmed as the Chief was, with her startled act, and for a moment, Buzz could almost taste the popcorn too. But he waited, his head up. “Julio hates bangers, especially their posturing.” Tao didn't seem worried, even though he was admitting that some of that had been real.

“Posturing?” Buzz hadn't meant to ask.

“They're stupid, scared punks,” Provenza explained for him, making comical faces, “and they don't want to admit that the Chief has them. There are formalities to be observed first, even in the hood.” Buzz was pretty sure that was a joke, maybe. At his puzzled frown, Tao smiled, gestured back at the screen.

“They assumed she was weak and she let them,” he continued. “Now they need a reason to talk, to save face, and Sanchez is that reason.” As though it was obvious, that everyone was only playing at being big, scary badasses, or that they weren't, and Buzz should be able to spot the difference.

“And...Detective Sanchez?”

“He doesn't like bullies.” Buzz could hear the wide grin now, like he heard the pause that meant there was more there that Tao wasn't going to share.

Buzz fiddled with his keyboard, touched the screen until the static sparked hot against his hand, but there wasn't a way to make the picture any clearer.

 

 

At the station, awake for over twenty-four hours, the whole world started to get fuzzy at the edges, and not only for Buzz. The jokes had died hours ago, the suits had been stripped away to reveal sweaty collared shirts with rolled up sleeves, opened buttons. The Chief's heels were gone, replaced with more comfortable crime scene booties. Buzz wasn't sure that he was needed anymore, but nobody else in the squad was moving to tell him to go, so he walked around the station, staring with bleary eyes at the others, all of them waiting for the interview to _finally_ happen.

When he was finally called in, his room was crowded with bodies, Chief Pope, even Commander Taylor, all grimly looking up as Buzz tried to squeeze around them. The room smelled of stale sweat and sharp coffee, and Buzz inhaled before he realized why, took a good look at the guilty, defiant faces around him before settling his gaze on his empty chair.

Julio—Det. Sanchez—shifted before Buzz could do anything more than open his mouth.

A chair scraped against the ground, rubber on tile, loud in the quiet room, and Buzz stepped forward automatically, looking around again, at the distance of a few feet, maybe less.

The man's hands were at the back of his chair, and stayed there until Buzz put his own hand there to sit down, their fingers separated by an unseen line, thin as a wire.

Sanchez was staring ahead, at the moniter, at the empty interview room, a cup of coffee in front of him, hot enough to burn his cheeks as pulled his hand away to pick it up.

Buzz blinked, turned to face the screen too, too slowly, saw a cup waiting in front of him. The screen was on, revealing an empty interview room, though Buzz didn't know who had been paying enough attention to know how to turn on all his equipment.

Nobody was speaking, their eyes on their own coffees when Buzz turned around to stare at them, even Chief Pope, even Sanchez, who was suddenly fighting a smile.

Buzz breathed out, felt his mouth turn up when no one could meet his eyes.

“Just this once,” he allowed, grudgingly, and turned back at the sudden flurry of pleased motion, trying not to think of spills, stains, fried circuit boards. He breathed out, willed his muscles to relax, his shoulders to straighten. He could rebuild anything they broke, he told himself, then had to speak again, clearing his throat. “But be careful.”

“Of course,” Chief Pope agreed instantly, made it clear and official, and at the obedient chorus that followed, Buzz let himself grin before he ducked his head.

 

The End

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [С едой и водой нельзя!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5150222) by [RozeAlin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RozeAlin/pseuds/RozeAlin)




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